![]() ![]() ![]() I couldn’t see any functional reason, except the responsibility of running the Council on Wage and Price Stability, with its new program of enforcing wage and price standards.Īnd I remember saying, If you really want someone whose principal job is to run the wage and price standards, you don’t have the right person-I’m not interested in doing that. Does it look as if there’s really any point, other than a cosmetic point, which may have been one of the main reasons for doing it. I remember, for example, protesting many times, What do you need an advisor on inflation for? Inflation is intimately associated with other economic policies, you’ve got a Chief Economic Advisor, the Chairman of your Council of Economic Advisors, with specialist members in the macro and micro field- at that time there was Lyle Gramley and Bill Nordhaus- And you have in addition the Secretary of the Treasury, who is supposed to be your Chief Economic Advisor. Interestingly others of those were George Shultz and Joe Pechman, whom you may or may not know. I’d done some writing, but it was not my major area of expertise, and I had no real connections with the administration other than an old friendship with Charlie Schultze because he and I were senior staff members at the same time in Arthur Burns’ Council of Economic Advisors. Now why did they ask me? I had had no professional, no appreciable professional exposure to the problems of inflation. Later, while in the process of trying to decide, I had conversations with Hamilton Jordan and Stu Eizenstat. And it was then that they said that the President wanted me to take those two jobs. I found myself talking to Bob Strauss and Fritz Mondale, and Charlie Schultze. And when I got back, sometime after October 15, I think, there was a message waiting for me that the Vice President wanted to see me. In early October I was in Europe for meetings on international aviation policy and a week in Venice because it was my 35th wedding anniversary that was October 10. I was Chairman of the CAB, had been appointed in early June of ’77. I had no role whatever in the formulation of that. You will recall that the President evidently was in the process of formulating his third anti-inflation program-I think that’s the one that I inherited-announced on, I think, October 24. On the question of how I came to occupy the two positions-the chairmanship of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and the position whose official title was Advisor to the President on Inflation-I am forced to rely primarily on inference and surmise. We generally like to start out by having you, if this is agreeable, just talk in general terms about how you came to be involved in this White House and an overview of your work, and we might find it helpful also if Dennis Rapp and Ron Lewis-or you-could tell us about what your special responsibilities were, and something about your background because we know well only Al Kahn’s background. We do try to keep some kind of focus for the segments of these sessions, ending up tomorrow with our talk about how one should look at the large picture of the Carter Presidency, its problems, its successes, its difficulties. I’ve discussed the general range of topics that we-the academic participants-considered yesterday, and there seems to be a good deal of convergence between what you’d like to talk about and what we’d like to hear about, in general. And following that the transcripts will be made generally available to scholars, and copies filed in the National Archives for that purpose. It’s further understood that these transcripts are to be used for scholarly research purposes and that our plan is to use these transcripts as primary source material for the Miller Center-sponsored overview by scholars of the Carter Presidency. I’ve reviewed with our guests the ground rules that prevail for all these sessions and it is understood that nothing said in the room goes out of the room, that the transcripts of the session, which are off the record, are first seen by nobody but the three former staff participants, who then have the opportunity to edit and review their words as recorded in the transcript-to indicate statements that they prefer to keep off the record or that require special permission to quote. I would like to welcome our three guests from the Carter staff: Alfred Kahn, Ron Lewis, and Dennis Rapp. ![]()
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